Carbon Free Boston: Buildings Technical Report

Part of a series of reports that includes: Carbon Free Boston: Summary Report; Carbon Free Boston: Social Equity Report; Carbon Free Boston: Technical Summary; Carbon Free Boston: Transportation Technical Report; Carbon Free Boston: Waste Technical Report; Carbon Free Boston: Energy Technical Report; Carbon Free Boston: Offsets Technical Report; Available at http://sites.bu.edu/cfb/OVERVIEW: Boston is known for its historic iconic buildings, from the Paul Revere House in the North End, to City Hall in Government Center, to the Old South Meeting House in Downtown Crossing, to the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill, to 200 Clarendon (the Hancock Tower) in Back Bay, to Abbotsford in Roxbury. In total, there are over 86,000 buildings that comprise more than 647 million square feet of area. Most of these buildings will still be in use in 2050. Floorspace (square footage) is almost evenly split between residential and non-residential uses, but residential buildings account for nearly 80,000 (93 percent) of the 86,000 buildings. Boston’s buildings are used for a diverse range of activities that include homes, offices, hospitals, factories, laboratories, schools, public service, retail, hotels, restaurants, and convention space. Building type strongly influences energy use; for example, restaurants, hospitals, and laboratories have high energy demands compared to other commercial uses. Boston’s building stock is characterized by thousands of turn-of-the-20th century homes and a postWorld War II building boom that expanded both residential buildings and commercial space. Boston is in the midst of another boom in building construction that is transforming neighborhoods across the city. [TRUNCATED]Published versio

DARWIN: towards the ultimate dark matter detector

DARk matter WImp search with liquid xenoN (DARWIN) will be an experiment forthe direct detection of dark matter using a multi-ton liquid xenon timeprojection chamber at its core. Its primary goal will be to explore theexperimentally accessible parameter space for Weakly Interacting MassiveParticles (WIMPs) in a wide mass-range, until neutrino interactions with thetarget become an irreducible background. The prompt scintillation light and thecharge signals induced by particle interactions in the xenon will be observedby VUV sensitive, ultra-low background photosensors. Besides its excellentsensitivity to WIMPs above a mass of 5 GeV/c2, such a detector with its largemass, low-energy threshold and ultra-low background level will also besensitive to other rare interactions. It will search for solar axions, galacticaxion-like particles and the neutrinoless double-beta decay of 136-Xe, as wellas measure the low-energy solar neutrino flux with <1% precision, observecoherent neutrino-nucleus interactions, and detect galactic supernovae. Wepresent the concept of the DARWIN detector and discuss its physics reach, themain sources of backgrounds and the ongoing detector design and R&D efforts

Search for Electronic Recoil Event Rate Modulation with 4 Years of XENON100 Data

We report on a search for electronic recoil event rate modulation signatures in the XENON100 data accumulated over a period of 4 years, from January 2010 to January 2014. A profile likelihood method, which incorporates the stability of the XENON100 detector and the known electronic recoil background model, is used to quantify the significance of periodicity in the time distribution of events. There is a weak modulation signature at a period of $431^{+16}_{-14}$ days in the low energy region of $(2.0-5.8)$ keV in the single scatter event sample, with a global significance of $1.9\,\sigma$, however no other more significant modulation is observed. The expected annual modulation of a dark matter signal is not compatible with this result. Single scatter events in the low energy region are thus used to exclude the DAMA/LIBRA annual modulation as being due to dark matter electron interactions via axial vector coupling at $5.7\,\sigma$.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Search for bosonic super-WIMP interactions with the XENON100 experiment

We present results of searches for vector and pseudoscalar bosonic super-weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which are dark matter candidates with masses at the keV-scale, with the XENON100 experiment. XENON100 is a dual-phase xenon time projection chamber operated at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso. A profile likelihood analysis of data with an exposure of 224.6 live days Ã\u9734 kg showed no evidence for a signal above the expected background. We thus obtain new and stringent upper limits in the (8-125) keV/c2 mass range, excluding couplings to electrons with coupling constants of gae>3Ã\u9710-13 for pseudo-scalar and αâ\u80²/α>2Ã\u9710-28 for vector super-WIMPs, respectively. These limits are derived under the assumption that super-WIMPs constitute all of the dark matter in our galaxy

Langerhans cells, veiled cells, and interdigitating cells in the mouse recognized by a monoclonal antibody

dendritic cells (DC) form a group of non]ymphoid dendritic cells (NLDC) postulated to act primarily as antigen-presenting or accessory cells, in particular as inducers of T-dependent responses (1-5). The cells originate from bone marrow (3, 6, 7), but although it has been suggested that they belong to the mononuclear phagocyte system (8, 9), a direct relationship with monocyte] macrophage populations has not yet been proven. In contrast to typical macrophages, these DC show little phagocytic activity (10-12), whereas high levels of Ia antigens are constitutively expressed (13-16). LC are described as the primary immunocompetent cell in the skin, playing a role in the presentation of antigen to T cells and the induction of contact sensitivity (2, 4, 17). They can migrate from the skin into the afferent lymph (18, 19) as VC, characterized by their long, actively moving processes (19, 20). During their travel via the afferent lymph, VC can carry antigen, which may be presented to lymphocytes in the draining lymph node (21). Based on morphological criteria and localization patterns after cell transfer, it has been hypothesize